Helma powered AppJet - Takeoff!

David Greenspan, JD Zamfirescu, and Aaron Iba have
released AppJet
. Like
OpenMocha
, it's a web-based soft-coding framework that streamlines the easy development and deployment of small web apps using server-side javascript and like OpenMocha, it's powered by Helma.

Unlike OpenMocha, they went the extra miles of making the framework very approachable by well integrating AppJet online hosting of your custom apps, by designing the framework in a way that I think developers used to PHP like environments will appreciate and by gearing it towards very simple, small apps at the beginning.

The key that enables a hosted app service like this to deploy many small apps from many users without fuss is to properly seal the server-side javascript environments of the different apps from each other. Security is the main factor there of course, but efficiency is the other. I've been experimenting with this a bit for a future update to OpenMocha and learned that it is trickier than I would like it to be.

No surprise then that this is exactly the area of their code that they consider to be their crown jules and that they won't be able to open source. They do intend to open-source the Javascript framework that runs within (and around, presumably) that virtualization. Actually, the source of the framework that runs within the virtualization
is already visible online
.

I particularly like the way they encourage appjet apps to be an open collection, in a sense becoming an appjet code library. That's an aspect that already was very successful in the
old days of WebCrossing
and that I think is an essential part of a web-soft-coding environment.

Indeed, facilitating easy code reuse and sharing is a focal point that would benefit the Helma community at large as well. I need to setup something like a code bin, where we can easily upload, categorize, search and find code snippets for reuse in other Helma apps.

Joshua Paine
has ported the
js lib for working with couchdb
from AJAX and crockford's json to helma.http and helma's json support. Definitely a candidate for inclusion as part of the modules in the next Helma release, I'd say. Now, if we use the onInit and onPersist hooks and suppress the embedded db, we could directly leverage all the fancyness of HopObjects for
CouchDB
, including the caching :-)

Although I prefer the dynamic and flexible nature of Javascript to be taken even further instead of tying things down with classes, strict types and non-mutable built-ins, I see why ES4 is a good next step for ES as the "universal scripting language". ES should be able to bend all the way to where it becomes similar to a strict compile-time language. In a sense, the ability to be strict becomes the proof of its ultimate flexibility.

On the other side, I hope we can still get more features into ES4 that increase its dynamic nature. Maybe some of what Doug Crockford has up his sleeve with ES3.1 can still go into ES4 *in addition* to what the majority of
TG1
is already proposing. Yes, that would make ES4 an even bigger revision. After the amount of time that has passed since the evolution of Javascript has cooled down with the end of the browser war, a big revision is overdue. Client-side technology has again become a focus. As a result of the Ajax hype, Adobe's AIR and MS's Silverlight, the client-side is again becoming a battle ground.

So, churn TG1, churn. Bring us new ECMAScript revisions quickly. Don't hesitate to split things up into multiple specs, like you've done in the past with
Ecma-327
and
Ecma-357
. For example, a more flexible, less secure mode allowing embeddings to opt-out of the non-mutability for built-in types, offering macros and allowing even built-in keywords to be overridden can all make sense in some environments. So would a much more limited, more secured ECMAScript subset, defined as a separate opt-in standard, that could provide a jailed eval to embeddings that need it.

The use case in browsers is only a small part of the entire ECMAScript universe. Outside the world of browsers, maximizing flexibility can also mean to allow embeddings to run in different modes or to not require them to implement all ECMAScript subsets. So, not everything that is standardized under the name "ECMAScript" actually has to end up in web browsers!

"It's faster than rails, and IMO nicer to develop with. Having all the Java libraries without having to code in Java is sweet. The ORM is really well-designed and the built-in object cache is super fast. The template system has its quirks, but once you get used to it, is also really sweet."

"It's a shame helma wasn't documented or evangelized as well as rails was. I think it's a better framework that just didn't catch on because it wasn't marketed well."

And
midnightmonster
continues to evangelize E4X and the flexibility of Helma's server-side environment.

On November 1st,
World
Radio Geneva
will become World Radio Switzerland.
For many years, World Radio Geneva has served yours truly as the
"official sound track". This site has linked to
their live audio stream
and
my better bits of code have all been written under the influence
of "88.4 FM WRG".

Over the past years, WRG has been operating as a privat local
radio station. With the change to WRS, it will become a national
public radio station. The new WRS station will have had a
turbulent history, if you count all the different bits together.

The swiss public service broadcaster
SRG
SSR
has statutes very similar to Britain's BBC and originally
applied for an FM license for WRG with the intention of mainly
re-using content produced by Swiss Radio International. However,
the license it finally received from the federal government
mandated that the station had to be commercial, limiting the
ability to re-use Swiss Radio International content.

Swiss Radio International was later forced to focus on internet
content, becoming
swissinfo
,
and the SRG SSR made its Radio Suisse Romande (RSR) subsidiary the
principal shareholder together with Reuters and the BBC. Recent changes
in swiss law made the involvement of the SRG SSR in a commercial
radio station again more troublesome and the SRG SSR was forced
to either sell WRG entirely or absorb it into its public service
structure. The latter is what has happened and as a result WRG
will go national as WRS with the blessing of the federal
government.

World Radio Switzerland could become a small but important puzzle
piece moving us closer towards an anglo-professional and one day
maybe an anglo-official future. Switzerland has a unique
opportunity in this regard since it does not have to protect its
current official languages to the extent necessary in nations
like France, Germany and Italy for cultural reasons. Lifting the
status of English in Switzerland will have a unifying effect and
will re-energize the evolution of our political principals.

Now, on one hand, I'm really excited about the potential of what
World Radio Switzerland could become. A WRG-FM equivalent for all
of Switzerland would be a fantastic thing to have. It would be
the radio channel of my dreams and, more importantly, it would be
exactly the medicine Switzerland needs to move its collective
consciousness forward in the right direction.

On the other hand, I'm really worried that they'll screw it up
and miss that opportunity, because I don't know if they
understand themselves what it is that makes WRG-FM tick and
whether they can properly translate and scale that to a national
level. Assuming the current management of WRG does in fact "get"
it, will they be able to defend the genetic code of WRG against
the infectious influences that they will be exposed to from other
interest groups inside and outside of the SRG SSR?

With the start of World Radio Switzerland, Switzerland is at a
cross-roads between ...ehm... no change, and leveraging that
media to develop a higher level of self-awareness. Will we miss
that opportunity?

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